Search Results: "mace"

7 April 2020

First of all, congratulations to all those who got us 2022 Debconf, so we will finally have a debconf in India. There is of course, lot of work to be done between now and then. For those who would be looking forward to visit India and especially Kochi I would suggest you to hear this enriching tale

I am sorry I used youtube link but it is too good a podcast not to be shared. Those who don t want youtube can use the invidio.us link for the same as shared below.
https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=BvjgKuKmnQ4
I am sure there are lot more details, questions, answers etc. but would direct them gently to Praveen, Shruti, Balasankar and the rest who are from Kochi to answer if you have any questions about that history.

National Science Day, GMRT 2020
First, as always, we are and were grateful to both NCRA as well as GMRT for taking such good care of us. Even though Akshat was not around, probably getting engaged, a few of us were there. About 6-7 from the Mozilla Nasik while the rest representing the foss community. Here is a small picture which commentrates the event

National Science Day, GMRT 2020

While there is and was a lot to share about the event. For e.g. Akshay had bought RPI- Zero as well as RPI-2 (Raspberry Pi s ) and showed some things. He had also bought up a Debian stable live drive with persistence although the glare from the sun was too much that we couldn t show it to clearly to students. This was also the case with RPI but still we shared what and how much we could. Maybe next year, we either ask them to have double screens or give us dark room so we can showcase things much better. We did try playing with contrast and all but it didn t have much of an effect . Of course in another stall few students had used RPI s as part of their projects so at times we did tell some of the newbies to go to those stalls and see and ask about those projects so they would have a much wider experience of things. The Mozilla people were pushing VR as well as Mozilla lite the browser for the mobile.
We also gossiped quite a bit. I shared about indicatelts , a third-party certificate extension although I dunno if I should file a wnpp about it or not. We didn t have a good experience of when I had put an RFP (Request for Package) which was accepted for an extension which had similar functionality which we later come to know was sharing the sites people were using the extension to call home and share both the URL and the IP Address they were using it from. Sadly, didn t leave a good taste in mouth

Delhi Riots
One thing I have been disappointed with is the lack of general awareness about things especially in the youth. We have people who didn t know that for e.g. in the Delhi riots which happened recently the law and order (Police) lies with Home Minister of India, Amit Shah. This is perhaps the only capital in the world which has its own Chief Minister but doesn t have any say on its law and order. And this has been the case for last 70 years i.e. since independance. The closest I know so far is the UK but they too changed their tune in 2012. India and especially Delhi seems to be in a time-capsule which while being dysfunctional somehow is made to work. In many ways, it s three body or a body split into three personalities which often makes governance a messy issue but that probably is a topic for another day. In fact, scroll had written a beautiful editorial that full statehood for Delhi was not only Arvind Kejriwal s call (AAP) but also something that both BJP as well as Congress had asked in the past. In fact, nothing about the policing is in AAP s power. All salaries, postings, transfers of police personnel everything is done by the Home Ministry, so if any blame has to be given it has to be given to the Home Ministry for the same.

American Capitalism and Ventilators
America had been having a history of high cost healthcare as can be seen in this edition of USA today from 2017 . The Affordable Care Act was signed as a law by President Obama in 2010 which Mr. Trump curtailed when he came into power couple of years back. An estimated 80,000 people died due to seasonal flu in 2018-19 . Similarly, anywhere between 24-63,000 have supposed to have died from Last October to February-March this year. Now if the richest country can t take care of their population which is 1/3rd of the population of this country while at the same time United States has thrice the area that India has. This I am sharing as seasonal flu also strikes the elderly as well as young children more than adults. So in one senses, the vulnerable groups overlap although from some of the recent stats, for Covid-19 even those who are 20+ are also vulnerable but that s another story altogether.
If you see the CDC graph of the seasonal flu it is clear that American health experts knew about it. One another common factor which joins both the seasonal flu and covid is both need ventilators for the most serious cases. So, in 2007 it was decided that the number of ventilators needed to be ramped up, they had approximately 62k ventilators at that point in time all over U.S. The U.S. in 2010, asked for bids and got bid from a small californian company called Newport Medic Instruments. The price of the ventilators was approximately INR 700000 at 2010 prices, while Newport said they would be able to mass-produce at INR 200000 at 2010 prices. The company got the order and they started designing the model which needed to be certified by FDA. By 2011, they got the product ready when a big company called Covidgen bought Newport Medic and shutdown the project. This was shared in a press release in 2012. The whole story was broken by New York Times again, just a few days ago which highlighted how America s capitalism rough shod over public health and put people s life unnecessarily in jeopardy. If those new-age ventilators would have been a reality then not just U.S. but India and many other countries would have bought the ventilators as every county has same/similar needs but are unable to pay the high cost which in many cases would be passed on to their citizens either as price of service, or by raising taxes or a mixture of both with public being none the wiser. Due to dearth of ventilators and specialized people to operate it and space, there is possibility that many countries including India may have to make tough choices like Italian doctors had to make as to who to give ventilator to and have the mental and emotional guilt which would be associated with the choices made.

Some science coverage about diseases in wire and other publications
Since Covid coverage broke out, the wire has been bringing variousreports of India s handling of various epidemics, mysteries, some solved, some still remaining unsolved due to lack of interest or funding or both. The Nipah virus has been amply discussed in the movie Virus (2019) which I shared in the last blog post and how easily it could have been similar to Italy in Kerala. Thankfully, only 24 people including a nurse succumbed to that outbreak as shared in the movie. I had shared about Kerala nurses professionalism when I was in hospital couple of years back. It s no wonder that their understanding of hygeine and nursing procedures are a cut above the rest hence they are sought after not just in India but world-over including US and UK and the middle-east. Another study on respitory illness was bought to my attention by my friend Pavithran.

Possibility of extended lockdown in India
There was talk in the media of extended lockdown or better put an environment is being created so that an extended lockdown can be done. This is probably in part due to a mathematical model and its derivatives shared by two Indian-origin Cambridge scholars who predict that a minimum 49 days lockdown may be necessary to flatten the covid curve about a week back.

Predictions of the outcome of the current 21-day lockdown (Source: Rajesh Singh, R. Adhikari, Cambridge University)

Alternative lockdown strategies suggested by the Cambridge model (Source: Rajesh Singh, R. Adhikari, Cambridge University)
India caving to US pressure on Hydroxychloroquine
While there has been lot of speculation in U.S. about Hydroxychloroquine as the wonder cure, last night Mr. Trump threatened India in a response to a reporter that Mr. Modi has to say no for Hydroxychloroquine and there may be retaliations.

As shared before if youtube is not your cup you can see the same on invidio.us
https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=YP-ewgoJPLw
Now while there have been several instances in the past of U.S. trying to bully India, going all the way back to 1954. In fact, in recent memory, there were sanctions on India by US under Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government (BJP) 1998 but he didn t buckle under the pressure and now we see our current PM taking down our own notification from a day ago and not just sharing Hydroxychloroquine but also Paracetemol to other countries so it would look as if India is sharing with other countries. Keep in mind, that India, Brazil haven t seen eye to eye on trade agreements of late and Paracetemol prices have risen in India. The price rise has been because the API (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients) for the same come from China where the supply chain will take time to be fixed and we would also have to open up, although should we, should we not is another question altogether. I talk about supply chains as lean supply chains were the talk since late 90 s when the Japanese introduced Just-in-time manufacturing which lead to lean supply chains as well as lot of outsourcing as consequence. Of course, the companies saved money but at the cost of flexibility and how this model was perhaps flawed was shared by a series of articles in Economist as early as 2004 when there were lot of shocks to that model and would be exaberated since then. There have been frequent shocks to these fragile ecosystem more since 2008 after the financial meltdown and this would put more companies out of business than ever before.
The MSME sector in India had already been severely impacted first by demonetization and then by the horrendous implementation of GST whose cries can be heard from all sectors. Also the frequent changing of GST taxes has made markets jumpy and investors unsure. With judgements such as retrospective taxes, AGR (Adjusted Gross Revenue) etc. it made not only the international investors scared, but also domestic investors. The flight of the capital has been noticeable. This I had shared before when Indian Government shared about LRS report which it hasn t since then. In fact Outlook Business had an interesting article about it where incidentally it talked about localcircles, a community networking platform where you get to know of lot of things and whom I am also a member of.
At the very end I apologize for not sharing the blog post before but then I was feeling down but then I m not the only one.

29 March 2020

My free software activities in february 2020
March is ending but I finally wrote my monthly report about activities in Debian
and Free Software in general for February.
As I already wrote here, I
attended to FOSDEM 2020 on February 1st and 2nd in Brussels. It was a amazing
experience.
After my return to Curitiba, I felt my energies renewed to start new challenges.

MiniDebConf Macei 2020
I continued helping to organize MiniDebConf and I got positive answers from
4Linux and Globo.com and they
are sponsorsing the event.

FLISOL 2020
I started to talk with Maristela from IEP - Instituto de Engenharia do
Paran and after some messages and I joined a meeting with
her and other members of C mara T cnica de Eletr nica, Computa o e Ci ncias de
Dados.
I explained about FLISOL in Curitiba to them and
they agreed to host the event at IEP. I asked to use three spaces: Auditorium
for FLISOL talks, Sal o Nobre for meetups from
WordPress and
PostgreSQL Communities, and
the hall for Install Fest.
Besides FLISOL, they would like to host other events and meetups from
Communities in Curitiba as Python, PHP, and so on. At least one per month.
I helped to schedule a PHP Paran Community
meetup on March.

New job
Since 17th I started to work at Rentcars as
Infrastructure Analyst. I m very happy to work there because we use a lot of
FLOSS and with nice people.
Ubuntu LTS is the approved OS for desktops but I could install Debian on my
laptop :-)

Misc
I signed pgp keys from friends I met in Brussels and I had my pgp key signed by
them.
Finally my MR to the DebConf20 website fixing
some texts was accepted.
I have watched v deos from FOSDEM

Until now, I saw these great talks:

Growing Sustainable Contributions Through Ambassador Networks

Building Ethical Software Under Capitalism

Cognitive biases, blindspots and inclusion

Building a thriving community in company-led open source projects

Building Community for your Company s OSS Projects

The Ethics of Open Source

Be The Leader You Need in Open Source

The next generation of contributors is not on IRC

Open Source Won, but Software Freedom Hasn t Yet

Open Source Under Attack

Lessons Learned from Cultivating Open Source Projects and Communities

That s all folks!

21 May 2017

Sector General is the fifth book (or, probably more accurately,
collection) in the Sector General series. I blame the original publishers
for the confusion. The publication information is for the Alien
Emergencies omnibus, which includes the fourth through the sixth books in
the series.
Looking back on my previous reviews of this series (wow, it's been eight
years since I read the last one?), I see I was reviewing them as novels
rather than as short story collections. In retrospect, that was a
mistake, since they're composed of clearly stand-alone stories with a very
loose arc. I'm not going to go back and re-read the earlier collections
to give them proper per-story reviews, but may as well do this properly
here.
Overall, this collection is more of the same, so if that's what you want,
there won't be any negative surprises. It's another four
engineer-with-a-wrench stories about biological and medical puzzles, with
only a tiny bit of characterization and little hint to any personal life
for any of the characters outside of the job. Some stories are
forgettable, but White does create some memorable aliens. Sadly, the
stories don't take us to the point of real communication, so those aliens
stop at biological puzzles and guesswork. "Combined Operation" is
probably the best, although "Accident" is the most philosophical and an
interesting look at the founding principle of Sector General.
"Accident": MacEwan and Grawlya-Ki are human and alien brought
together by a tragic war, and forever linked by a rather bizarre war
monument. (It's a very neat SF concept, although the implications and
undiscussed consequences don't bear thinking about too deeply.) The
result of that war was a general recognition that such things should not
be allowed to happen again, and it brought about a new, deep commitment
to inter-species tolerance and politeness. Which is, in a rather
fascinating philosophical twist, exactly what MacEwan and Grawlya-Ki are
fighting against: not the lack of aggression, which they completely agree
with, but with the layers of politeness that result in every species
treating all others as if they were eggshells. Their conviction is that
this cannot create a lasting peace.
This insight is one of the most profound bits I've read in the Sector
General novels and supports quite a lot of philosophical debate. (Sadly,
there isn't a lot of that in the story itself.) The backdrop against
which it plays out is an accidental crash in a spaceport facility,
creating a dangerous and potentially deadly environment for a variety of
aliens. Given the collection in which this is included and the
philosophical bent described above, you can probably guess where this
goes, although I'll leave it unspoiled if you can't. It's an idea that
could have been presented with more subtlety, but it's a really great
piece of setting background that makes the whole series snap into focus.
A much better story in context than its surface plot. (7)
"Survivor": The hospital ship Rhabwar rescues a sole
survivor from the wreck of an alien ship caused by incomplete safeguards
on hyperdrive generators. The alien is very badly injured and unconscious
and needs the full attention of Sector General, but on the way back, the
empath Prilicla also begins suffering from empathic hypersensitivity.
Conway, the protagonist of most of this series, devotes most of his
attention to that problem, having delivered the rescued alien to competent
surgical hands. But it will surprise no regular reader that the problems
turn out to be linked (making it a bit improbable that it takes the
doctors so long to figure that out). A very typical entry in the series.
(6)
"Investigation": Another very typical entry, although this time
the crashed spaceship is on a planet. The scattered, unconscious bodies
of the survivors, plus signs of starvation and recent amputation on all of
them, convinces the military (well, police is probably more accurate)
escort that this is may be a crime scene. The doctors are unconvinced,
but cautious, and local sand storms and mobile vegetation add to the
threat. I thought this alien design was a bit less interesting (and a lot
creepier). (6)
"Combined Operation": The best (and longest) story of this
collection. Another crashed alien spacecraft, but this time it's huge,
large enough (and, as they quickly realize, of a design) to indicate a
space station rather than a ship, except that it's in the middle of
nowhere and each segment contains a giant alien worm creature. Here,
piecing together the biology and the nature of the vehicle is only the
beginning; the conclusion points to an even larger problem, one that
requires drawing on rather significant resources to solve. (On a
deadline, of course, to add some drama.) This story requires the doctors
to go unusually deep into the biology and extrapolated culture of the
alien they're attempting to rescue, which made it more intellectually
satisfying for me. (7)
Followed by Star Healer.
Rating: 6 out of 10

20 March 2017

DebConf17 will take place in Montreal, Canada in August 2017. We are working hard
to provide fuel for hearts and minds, to make this conference once again a
fertile soil for the Debian Project flourishing. Please join us and support
this landmark in the Free Software calendar.
Eighteen companies have already committed to sponsor DebConf17! With a warm
welcome, we'd like to introduce them to you.
Our first Platinum sponsor is Savoir-faire Linux,
a Montreal-based Free/Open-Source Software company which offers Linux and
Free Software integration solutions and actively contributes to many free
software projects. "We believe that it's an essential piece [Debian], in a
social and political way, to the freedom of users using modern technological
systems", said Cyrille B raud, president of Savoir-faire Linux.
Our first Gold sponsor is Valve,
a company developing games, social entertainment platform, and game engine technologies.
And our second Gold sponsor is Collabora,
which offers a comprehensive range of services to help its clients to
navigate the ever-evolving world of Open Source.
As Silver sponsors we have
credativ
(a service-oriented company focusing on open-source software and also a
Debian development partner),
Mojatatu Networks
(a Canadian company developing Software Defined Networking (SDN) solutions),
the Bern University of Applied Sciences
(with over 6,600 students enrolled,
located in the Swiss capital),
Microsoft
(an American multinational technology company),
Evolix
(an IT managed services and support company located in Montreal),
Ubuntu
(the OS supported by Canonical)
and Roche
(a major international pharmaceutical provider and research company
dedicated to personalized healthcare).
ISG.EE,
IBM,
Bluemosh,
Univention
and Skroutz
are our Bronze sponsors so far.
And finally, The Linux foundation,
R seau Koumbit
and adte.ca
are our supporter sponsors.
Become a sponsor too!
Would you like to become a sponsor? Do you know of or work in a company or
organization that may consider sponsorship?
Please have a look at our
sponsorship brochure
(or a summarized flyer),
in which we outline all the details and describe the sponsor benefits.
For further details, feel free to contact us through sponsors@debconf.org, and
visit the DebConf17 website at https://debconf17.debconf.org.

2 January 2017

While Debconf India is still a pipe-dream as of now, did see that India has been gradually doing it easier for tourists and casual business visitors to come visit India. This I take as very positive development for India itself.
The 1st condition is itself good for anybody visiting India

This should make it somewhat easier for any Indian organizer as well as any participants from any of the member countries shared. There is possibility that this list would even get longer, provided we are able to scale our airports and all and any necessary infrastructure that would be needed for International Visitors to have a good experience.
What has been particularly interesting is to know which ports of call are being used by International Visitors as well as overall growth rate

The Ghojadanga land check post seems to be between West Bengal, India and Bangladesh. Gede Railway Station is also in West Bengal as well. So all and any overlanders could take any of those ways.Even Hardispur Land Check post comes in the Bengal-Bangladesh border only.
In the airports, Delhi Airport seems to be attracting lot more business than the Mumbai Airport. Part of the reason I *think* is the direct link of Delhi Airport to NDLS via the Delhi Airport Express Line . The same when it will happen in Mumbai should be a game-changer for city too.
Now if you are wondering why I have been suddenly talking about visas and airports in India, it came because Hong Kong is going to Withdraw Visa Free Entry Facility For Indians. Although, as rightly pointed out in the article doesn t make sense from economic POV and seems to be somewhat politically motivated. Not that I or anybody else can do anything about that.
Seeing that, I thought it was a good opportunity to see how good/Bad our Government is and it seems to be on the right path. Although the hawks (Intelligence and Counter-Terrorist Agencies) will probably become a bit more paranoid , their work becomes tougher.Filed under: Miscellenous Tagged: #Airport Metro Line 3, #CSIA, #Incredible India, #India, #International Tourism

3 September 2016

Nationalpark Bike Marathon 2016 report: gravity rules!
"Marathon" is a bit of a misnomer, since I did the short route, not
the medium nor the long one. But hey, it's the official name!
Setup
This race has four possible lengths: "Valader" which is full
round-trip Scuol-Scuol (137km/4'026m), "Jauer" (Fuldera-Scuol,
103km/2'934m), "Livignasco" (Livigno-Scuol, 66km/1'871m) and "Put r"
(S-chanf to Scuol, 47Km/1'051m).
After many debates, I settled on the Livignasco route, as that was
what I was reasonably confident to be able to do. The only problem was
that this route (and all the longer ones, of course) were going over
Pass Chaschauna, which is a quite hard climb. My bike shop person, who
did the full length a number of times, just said when hearing the
route I was planning: "Chaschauna is a bitch " Bad language, proper
characterisation.
The route choice also impacts the logistics: except for the full
route, the question is where to sleep the night before? One can sleep
either at the start place, or sleep in Scuol itself and take the
official shuttle to the start place, but this means waking up much
earlier. I decided to sleep in Livigno, as with a 7:45 start this
would allow me to sleep until ~6:30, have a quick breakfast and be in
time for the race. Problem #1
So on Friday (26th) I drove to Scuol, picked up my start number, and
then drove over to Livigno and checked in to the hotel. Speaking of
picking up the start number, I saw this at the start area:
An STI needed as pacer? How fast are these people, I wondered?
Day of the race
My plan to have a relaxing sleep until relatively late failed. I went
to sleep with difficulties: late dinner due to my late arrival in
Livigno, and then I was stressed enough about not missing the race
that at 05:05 I already woke up, and was checking the clock every five
minutes. Finally at 05:30 I gave up and got out of bed, with only
about 6 hours of sleep. Problem #2.
The other problem was that I na vely thought the hotel will have
breakfast from 07:00 or even 07:30. Hah, as if this was
Switzerland. The hotel had breakfast from 08:00, no reason to hurry,
right? So I had a poor man's breakfast in the room, some energy bars
and an ice tea. Problem #3. At least I had time to grab this picture
from the hotel room:
Not bad. On to the race!
But before that, remember to fill my hydration pack with 3L of water,
and put it in my not-so-light backpack. Of course I had tools and some
spare parts with me, what if something happens? Problem #4,
over-planning.
The race
The setup at the start was pretty easy. Wait near the start until
07:45, then go. For me, not too in front, of course:
Pass Chaschauna
About 3 kilometres of easy/flat road, and then it starts. Pass
Chaschauna, killing your legs softly
But at least the pictures were nice!
The climb is difficult. It was around 22% for most of the time, and
very few people were able to bike up. Not only the absolute meters
were the problem, but also the fact that the ground was quite loose,
and pushing the bike, or rather climbing up while pushing the bike,
was difficult to do in bike shoes with cleats. Proper hiking shoes
would have been much more adequate. Maybe this is why despite the
effort, some people biked as much as possible? I was careful not to
over-exert myself and walked almost all the way up. Hence the
pictures
But at last, reached the top of the pass, and was very happy to be
done with it. The GPX file from my Garmin says it took only 4 minutes
(1.2km) after the race start to actually start climbing (it was not
obvious we were climbing so early), and then 1h:20m/8Km to get from
1'817m altitude to the highest point at 2'658m. 8Km in 1h:20m, faster
than walking pace but quite slower than running pace (on flat terrain,
of course).
At the top of the pass I was quite happy:
And then the descent started:
All the way leading to the race I kept thinking only about climbing
Chaschauna, and not about going down on it. It was quite an
experience, which I won't forget soon.
The trail was already well travelled, which means that besides the
loose ground in form of large clumps of dried earth, there was a layer
of fine, somewhat moist earth, about 3-5 centimetres deep, which made
the downhill "interesting". Coupled with what was a much steeper trail
than going up I saw most of the time ~33% it's no surprise that many,
or even most, of the people were walking their bikes down. The GPX
track says that the trail goes 319m down in 1Km (so a 31.9% over one
entire kilometre), then another 130m over the next 1.4Km (9.28%), and
then (not sure if this is the pass per se or after) another longer
segment of ~260m over 3Km (8.56%). The first steep segment needs lots
of skill and concentration, the others are normal gradients.
But at least things go fast. What took uphill took ~40 minutes for the
last 450m up, downhill it took only 15 minutes!
Falling
I was able, thanks to recent training, to bike down the trail, or at
least I thought so. So on the steep segment I was struggling to bike
down and keep control of my bike, putting one leg down on some
sections but in general being "on the bike", being hit by the dirt I
was throwing in the air despite the mud-guards, being careful but at
the same time enjoying this difficult section.
That is, right up to the point where I got, I think, too
comfortable. After the second-to-last curve, the rear wheel slides, I
lose balance and fall in the (thankfully soft) dirt a bit more
forcefully than I should have, the bike also sliding along in the
dirt. No damage to myself, just some trivial scratches; the bike seems
a bit shaken (fork was turned 180 , full of dirt, etc.). I get again
on the bike and I continue down; however, something seems off: the
rear brake level doesn't have a return anymore, I have to push it to
go back. Still usable, but strange.
So I continue the other two segment of this descent, and over these
~4-5Km I feel the brake issue going worse and worse: it's actually
hard to push the brake lever back, and even pressing it doesn't seem
to have much effect. And then the realisation dawns on my: I have
hydraulic brakes, and the worsening thing leads me to think my brake
hose has been punctured (by what? I fell in loose dirt) and I'm losing
the brake fluid with every press.
Now, on flat road, biking with only the front brake is tricky but
doable. On an MTB course, having only one brake is not a smart
thing . Not easy, not smart, and definitely dangerous. It also felt
very strange to not have both brakes, and then I realised how much I
work with the brakes in unison.
I knew that there are repair posts in the race, but I didn't know if
they can fix such things (and doing a brake fluid refill how
complicated is it, how much time does it take?). Anyway, I resolved to
try and continue if the terrain allows until I reach the first repair
post, and stop if it gets too steep. It would be pretty sad to have to
abort the race after only 10Km, right?
The terrain did cooperate: up and down, so I was able to bleed speed
easily, and even though through forest, the visibility was good enough
that I could plan ahead. It was strangely lonely at this time: I was
going slowly and thus not reaching from behind anyone, but also not
being reached by riders from behind. I did enjoy it a bit, the
quietness of the forest, just interrupted by the squeaking of my front
brake
And then I finally see the sign for "Repair: 1Km". Yaaay! maybe I
don't have to quit the race. And then, about 100m further on, another
sign: "Danger! Steep descent". Uh-oh tantalisingly close Let's go
slow. And yes, here I was overtaken by 3-4 other cyclists. This was
the single moment in the race where I did have a moment of real fear:
at one point, I was going down with the remaining brake as pressed as
I could without compromising stability, and I was still gaining
speed. Not smart, and as I was debating how to fall to stop my
descent, the terrain started to get less steep, and I finally reached
the repair station, at kilometre 21.
Difficult repairs
There was another person being serviced for a flat rear tire, so I
wait in line and discuss with him my problem. Upon hearing I only had
the front brake, he said: "Wow, how did you manage to descend this
last segment?" "Well, slowly ".
My turn came up, I explain my problem and my theory, and the repair
guy gives me one look, the bike one look, but doesn't look at the
brake hose. Instead, he looks once at the brake lever, sees that
another cable guide on my handle bar was bent during the fall and
actually was mechanically interfering with the brake lever, unbends
that thing, and says "here you go". I was stunned. 15 seconds of
looking at the problem without stress, and the problem was solved. I
could have done this myself if I took the time to look and think, and
not hurry. And I could have enjoyed all the downhill on the pass, with
two functioning brakes.
Some lessons have to be learned the hard way, and this was one. I got
off easy though, as I didn't have a real accident while biking with
only one brake. And they say you get wiser as you get older
Anyway, brake repaired, I stopped at the Sanit r tent to have my
scratches disinfected, and onwards. The following few kilometres until
S-chanf I enjoyed very much.
S-chanf
And then, 2 hours 10 minutes into the race, I exit the forest trail,
reach S-chanf, and start climbing and descending and climbing and
descending. In the sun, which now (after 10 AM) is not that light
anymore. The initial climb at S-chanf, while not much, took away my
remaining short-term reserves.
The route is 50m ascent, then down and then another 50m ascent, and
after a bit of flat another 75m ascent I was getting tired, despite
eating energy bars and drinking water (and juice at stops). This goes
one for an entire hour, during which I cover about 23Km, so not a bad
speed everything considered. But getting more and more tired.
There were also some very nice segments, along the river, in the shade
of the forest. Some fast downhill, some fast flat.
I got overtaken by quite a few real racers, that were going so fast I
couldn't keep up with them as in I didn't dare ride that fast even
when I had the energy. Clearly they were from the longer segments, and
boy were they fast! A number of couples (or pairs?) one woman one man,
a number of bigger groups, all going as if they had E-bikes or
super-powers, not just biking along tired like me
Last climb
And then, the last big climb: half an hour of going about 300m up
(absolute values, so cumulative number would probably be higher), in
the sun, over about 6Km, so only 5% average gradient. But I was tired
and even resorted to walking on some portions At least I could take
some pictures again:
Or have pictures taken:
Nice views:
At one point, in a bit of a shade, I stop to catch my breath. Somebody
else stopped as well and, seeing as I was checking my GPS, asks:

"How much do we have left, about 10K?"

I say yes (or was it 15K? the numbers don't match well)

"And how about altitude?"

"About 350m left "

"Sigh "

I got overtaken by a lot of cyclists here, although many of them
were from S-chanf route (based on the number colour). Sad
The thing is, besides the climbing and the sun, this and the previous
part was a very nice route: through small towns, high above the
valley, beautiful landscapes, etc. Just enjoying it was hard, since I
wasn't a) trained well enough and b) prepared well enough.
Last segment, last downhill
In any case, after that hard half hour, it's flat (or rather said,
average gradient zero):
Good road, good views, but I'm on the last virtual bar of my battery,
so the remaining 15Km I do in 40 minutes, also "eating" the last
ascent meters still about 300 left, I think, but up/down/up/down, so
you could reuse kinetic energy to gain potential one.
The only question I had now was, the route was at this moment about
400m higher (in absolute altitude) than the finish point, so when do
we lose that altitude? The answer was a very very nice answer: in the
last 5Km, for an average gradient of 8%, just perfect. I was tired
however, so I couldn't really enjoy or go fast here, but it was a good
feeling.
Finish!
And then, entering Scuol, not really believing I'm near the finish,
that I will be able to actually stop and relax. My finish picture
doesn't do justice to how happy I was at that moment:
However, after passing the finish line, it was a bit weird. I just
stop now? What next? So weird to just walk, not push pedals, and not
go up. Or down.
The funny thing here was that I thought I didn't use much of my water
(hydration pack) during the race. But soon after finishing, I drank
the equivalent of about two glasses (let's say 0.5L) and it was
over. So I did manage to drink 2.5L during the race, plus the sport
drinks at the stops.
Time for stats: my Garmin says 67.07Km, 4h:29m, average speed 15.0kph
(hah), 1'615m elevation gain. Official numbers say 66Km, 1'871m
elevation, and thus 14.22kph. Ranking-wise:

147/192 in the overall men Livignasco route

44/60 in my age category

Sigh, could have done better. I was aiming for somewhere around last
33%, not last 25% First classed was ~66% faster than me
Going to the train station was hard as in difficult to move my
legs. Took one nice picture of Scuol though, so was able to think a
bit:
And then the long way back to Livigno. Took me 4 h to bike to Scuol,
and about 3 hours to go back via public transport. At least I ate a
sandwich in the meantime. Then reached Livigno, which was also looking
nice:
Then got on my bike, which at this point was magically light and easy
to ride (it seems I was at least partially recovered), rode to the
hotel, packed my stuff, and drove home. On the highway I had my first
real meal for that day, but I was quite tired so didn't feel like the
achievement it should have been
Lessons
The biggest takeaway from this race was the huge learning experience I
got. The race was itself awesome, but the learning even more so.
First, for this particular race, it's much better to sleep in Scuol
and (if not doing the whole route) take the shuttle to the actual
start. Yes, one has to wake up earlier, but you have assured breakfast
via the organisers (++++!), and after the race you don't have to get
even more tired by taking the train and the bus and
Second, I need better logistics: I don't need to carry that heavy load
(spare tube, pump, tools, jacket in case it's cold) when the race is
well organised. The water in the hydration pack was useful, but
carrying it up Chaschauna was a pain. Not sure what I'll do next; it's
possible to survive only on water/drinks from the food posts
(basically 2.5-2.8L is equivalent to only 4 750ml bottles, and there
were I think about 6 stops?), but the hydration pack is so easy to
use
Keeping one's head cool and not stress about things also would help:
had I looked at my brake lever in peace, I could have solved it
myself, and not ride ~10Km with only one brake.
Also, losing some weight (as in losing fat, not having a lighter bike)
would definitely help. I could stand to lose 5Kg easily, probably
10Kg, and that would bring me more in line with other people in the
race (at least looking at the pictures). And hey, my Watts/Kg would
improve magically!
And last but most important, I need better training. Training on how
to use my energy, training longer rides so that my body gets used to
it and doesn't bonk after 3 hours, training training training. Which I
like, but the problem is time to do it
Also, in case anybody wonders: yes, I do recommend this race! It was
definitely fun, and the route itself is very nice, nicer than the
pictures here show.
Closing words: gravity rules. Up or down, it's hard and
punishing. Still: Ride on!

19 August 2016

SmartInfo project with Debian
1. Me
Before getting into the thick of my project, let me present myself:
I am Olivier Gr goire (Gasuleg), and I study IT engineering at cole de Technologie sup rieure in Montreal.
I am an technician in electronics, and I began object-oriented programming just last year.
I applied to GSoC because I loved the concept of the project that I would work on and I really wanted to be part of it. I also wanted to discover the word of the free software.
2. My Project
During this GSoC, I worked on the Ring project.
Ring is a free software for communication that allows its users to make audio or video calls, in pairs or groups, and to send messages, safely and freely, in confidence.Savoir-faire Linux and a community of contributors worldwide develop Ring. It is available on GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac OSX and Android. It can be associated with a conventional phone service or integrated with any connected object.Under this very easy to use software, there is a combination of technologies and innovations opening all kinds of perspectives to its users and developers.Ring is a free software whose code is open. Therefore, it is not the software that controls you.With Ring, you take control of your communication!Ring is an open source software under the GPL v3 license. Everyone can verify the codes and propose new ones to improve the software s performace. It is a guarantee of transparency and freedom for everyone!
Source: ring.cx
The problem is about the typical user of Ring, the one who don t use the terminal to launch Ring. He has no information about what has happened in the system. My goal is to create a tool that display statistics of Ring.
3. Quick Explanation of What My Program Can Do
The Code
Here are the links to the code I was working on all throughout the Google Summer of Code (You can see what I have done after the GSoC by clicking on the newest patchs):

!!!!!CHANGE LINK TO PUT THE LATEST PATCHES BEFORE THE END OF GSOC!!!!!
What Can Be Displayed?
This is the final list of information I can display and some ideas on what information we could display in the future:

Information

Details

Done?

Call ID

The identification number of the call

Yes

Resolution

Local and remote

Yes

Framerate

Local and remote

Yes

Codec

Audio and video in local and remote

Yes

Bandwidth

Download and upload

No

Performance use

CPU, GPU, RAM

No

Security level

In SIP call

No

Connection time

No

Packets lost

No

To launch it you need to right click on the call and click on Show advanced information .
To stop it, same thing: right click on the call and click on Hide advanced information .
4. More Details About My Project
My program needs to retrieve information from the daemon (LibRing) and then display it in gnome client. So, I needed to create a patch for the daemon, the D-Bus layer (in the daemon patch), LibRingClient and the GNU/Linux (Gnome) client.
This is what the architecture of the project looks like.
source: ring.cx
And this is how I implemented my project.
5. Future of the Project

Add background on the gnome client

Implement the API smartInfoHub in all the other clients

Gather more information, such as bandwidth, resource consumption, security level, connection time, number of packets lost and anything else that could be deemed interesting

Display information for every participant in a conference call. I began to implement it for the daemon on patch set 25 .

6. Thanks
I would like to thank the following:
- The Google Summer of Code organisation, for this wonderful experience.
- Debian, for accepting my project proposal and letting me embark on this fantastic adventure.
- My mentor, Mr Guillaume Roguez, and all his team, for being there to help me.

SmartInfo project with Debian
1. Me
Before getting into the thick of my project, let me present myself:
I am Olivier Gr goire (Gasuleg), and I study IT engineering at cole de Technologie sup rieure in Montreal.
I am a technician in electronics, and I began object-oriented programming just last year.
I applied to GSoC because I loved the concept of the project that I would work on and I really wanted to be part of it. I also wanted to discover the word of the free software.
2. My Project
During this GSoC, I worked on the Ring project.
Ring is a free software for communication that allows its users to make audio or video calls, in pairs or groups, and to send messages, safely and freely, in confidence.Savoir-faire Linux and a community of contributors worldwide develop Ring. It is available on GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac OSX and Android. It can be associated with a conventional phone service or integrated with any connected object.Under this very easy to use software, there is a combination of technologies and innovations opening all kinds of perspectives to its users and developers.Ring is a free software whose code is open. Therefore, it is not the software that controls you.With Ring, you take control of your communication!Ring is an open source software under the GPL v3 license. Everyone can verify the codes and propose new ones to improve the software s performace. It is a guarantee of transparency and freedom for everyone!
Source: ring.cx
The problem is about the typical user of Ring, the one who don t use the terminal to launch Ring. He has no information about what has happened in the system. My goal is to create a tool that display statistics of Ring.
3. Quick Explanation of What My Program Can Do
The Code
Here are the links to the code I was working on all throughout the Google Summer of Code (You can see what I have done after the GSoC by clicking on the newest patchs):

What Can Be Displayed?
This is the final list of information I can display and some ideas on what information we could display in the future:

Information

Details

Done?

Call ID

The identification number of the call

Yes

Resolution

Local and remote

Yes

Framerate

Local and remote

Yes

Codec

Audio and video in local and remote

Yes

Bandwidth

Download and upload

No

Performance use

CPU, GPU, RAM

No

Security level

In SIP call

No

Connection time

No

Packets lost

No

To launch it you need to right click on the call and click on Show advanced information .
To stop it, same thing: right click on the call and click on Hide advanced information .
4. More Details About My Project
My program needs to retrieve information from the daemon (LibRing) and then display it in gnome client. So, I needed to create a patch for the daemon, the D-Bus layer (in the daemon patch), LibRingClient and the GNU/Linux (Gnome) client.
This is what the architecture of the project looks like.
source: ring.cx
And this is how I implemented my project.
5. Future of the Project

Add background on the gnome client

Implement the API smartInfoHub in all the other clients

Gather more information, such as bandwidth, resource consumption, security level, connection time, number of packets lost and anything else that could be deemed interesting

Display information for every participant in a conference call. I began to implement it for the daemon on patch set 25 .

Thanks
I would like to thank the following:
- The Google Summer of Code organisation, for this wonderful experience.
- Debian, for accepting my project proposal and letting me embark on this fantastic adventure.
- My mentor, Mr Guillaume Roguez, and all his team, for being there to help me.

25 December 2014

If you have previously read Bad Science
by Ben Goldacre, it's doubtful you need me to do anything other than point
out that he has a new book. Oh, and it's subtitled How Drug
Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients, and it's written with the
same indignant determination, clear explanation, and appreciation for real
science as Bad Science.
If you haven't read Bad Science, I recommend it. You don't have to
read it before Bad Pharma, but it's a more approachable start, and
a funnier book. Bad Science opens with some obviously horrible
examples, and slowly develops the tools required to analyze more advanced
and deceptive quackery. Bad Pharma jumps straight into the deep
end of statistical biases in data, how and why they're introduced, and why
they undermine your health care.
This is a more serious book than Bad Science, since it lacks the
medical quackery that is so ludicrous it's funny. Everything in Bad
Science is successfully sold to someone there are people who believe in
candling but most readers of the book can laugh a bit that anyone would
believe in such things before getting to the parts of the book where the
quackery is widespread and kills people. Bad Pharma focuses on the
mainstream pharmaceutical industry and the way that it distorts the
scientific process, which leads to serious consequences quite quickly.
Goldacre is more pointedly on a mission here than in his previous book.
This is not just an expos . It includes detailed recommendations for how
to make the drug evaluation process better, and some specific ethical
recommendations for doctors to avoid being unduly influenced by drug
company marketing. But before that, he provides the best detailed
explanation of how the drug research and approval process is supposed to
work that I've seen. There's also a lot of good information about how to
detect trials and related studies that haven't been done properly, and how
to separate marketing language from scientific evidence. Goldacre wisely
does not get into all the details of how to do a trial properly, which
would be way beyond the scope of this book, but he does provide valuable
rules of thumb and red flags that indicate when someone is probably not
doing the trial properly.
A point that's both frustrating and enlightening, and made very well by
this book, is that fixing many of the problems with the drug approval
process is not that difficult. Fixing all of them would be exceedingly
difficult, of course, since they involve humans, complex financial
motivations, the effectiveness of propaganda, and talented people who are
paid well to create favorable impressions for new drugs. But we could get
quite significant benefits from a few straightforward enhancements of the
existing drug approval process, such as requiring that all clinical trials
be pre-registered and all trial results published as a prerequisite for
any drug approval. Goldacre makes his case for these changes forcefully
and persuasively, and with justified anger. The current situation is bad
enough for people like me who are only potential patients with no urgent
medical issues. For a practicing doctor like Goldacre, it's infuriating
to be actively denied the information required to effectively save
people's lives.
Normally, I find books like this interesting, but depressing and
frustratingly limited. It's easy to write books about abuses that
currently exist, or the limitations of the current approach. It's much
harder to do what Goldacre does here: clearly describe the goals and
ideals of drug testing for the lay reader, detail how the current
approaches fall short of that goals, and then propose practical and
concrete ways to correct the situation. And keep the details interesting
and entertaining enough that I enjoyed reading every page of a nearly 400
page book.
This is not a book that will fill you with trust or enthusiasm for the
medical establishment (anywhere in the world). But it's still oddly
comforting: we do know how to do these things properly, and occasionally
we even act on that knowledge. These problems are serious, but they
should provoke outrage partly because they're correctable and yet aren't
being corrected. And there are doctors like Goldacre who are trying to
push medicine towards proper use of evidence, research, and knowledge,
instead of commercial manipulation. Recommended if you have any interest
at all in how medicine or scientific research is actually done, and what
its pitfalls look like.
Rating: 8 out of 10

26 May 2013

The Maker Faire is one of the Bay Area
things that I'll really miss. Zoe had a ball last year (for
weeks afterwards every outing was "Maker Faire!" regardless of what or where it
was)
Last year I didn't really get to cover it very well, so I ended up doing a bit
of a virtual tour via the exhibitor list on their website, and so this year I
thought I'd be there in spirit by doing the same thing again. Here's my picks:

3 December 2012

Apologies in advance for writing a long blog post about the dull and
specialised subject of
double-entry accounting
from the Unix tools perspective, that ends up talking about Monads to boot.
I can't believe I'm about to write such a thing, but I'm finding it an oddly
interesting subject.
double-entry accounting
I've known of, though probably not really understood double entry
accounting for a while, thanks to GnuCash. I think
GnuCash did something rather special in making such a subject approachable
to the layman, and I've been happy to recommend GnuCash to friends. I was
stoked to find a chapter in my sister Anna's
new book
that happily and plausibly suggests readers use GnuCash.
But for my personal use, GnuCash is clunky. I mean, I'm a programmer,
but I can't bring any of my abilities to bear on it, without a deep dive
into the code. The file format is opaque (and a real pain to keep checked
into git with all the log files); the user interface is often confusing,
but there's no benefit to its learning curve, it never seems to get better
than manually entering data into its ledger, or perhaps importing data from
a bank. I've never found the reports very useful.
I've got perhaps a year of data in GnuCash, but it's fragmented and
incomplete and not something I've been able to motivate myself to keep up
with. So I have less financial data than I'd like. I'm hoping ledger will
change that.
ledger
I've known about ledger for a while, at least since
This Linux Weekly News article.
It's a quintessential Unix tool, that simply processes text files.
The genius of it is the simplicity of the file format, that gets the essence
and full power of double entry bookeeping down to something that approaches a
meme. Once you get the file format stuck in your head, you're done for.

2004/05/27 Book Store
Expenses:Books $20.00
Liabilities:Visa

starting to use hledger
Now as a Haskell guy, I was immediately drawn to
the Haskell clone, hledger. It's nice that there
are two (mostly) compatable implementations of ledger too. So from here on,
I'll be talking about hledger.
I sat down and built a hledger setup for myself the other day.
I started by converting the GnuCash books I have been keeping up-to-date,
for a small side business (a rental property). It quickly turned into
something like programming, in the best way, as I used features like:

Include directives, so I can keep my business data in its own file,
while pulling it into my main one.

Simple refactorings, like putting "Y 2012" at the top, so I don't have
to write the year in each transaction.

Account aliases, so I can just type "rent", rather than
"income:rental" and "repairs:contractor" rather than
"expenses:home repair:contractor"

All the power of my favorite editor.

a modern unix program
While I've been diving into hledger, I've been drawing all kinds of parallels
between it and other modern Unix-friendly programs I use lately. I think
we've gone over a bit of a watershed recently. Unix tools used to be either
very simple and crude (though often quite useful), or really baroque and
complex with far too many options (often due to 10-30 years of evolution).
Or they were a graphical user interface, like GnuCash, and completely
divorced from Unix traditions.
The new unix programs have some commonalities...

They're a single command, with subcommands. This keeps
the complexity of doing any one thing down, and provides many
opportunities for traditional unix tools philosophy, without
locking the entire program into being a single-purpose unix tool.
hledger's subcommands range from querying and reports, to pipable
print, to a interactive interface.

They have a simple but powerful idea at their core, that can be
expressed with a phrase like "double entry accounting is a simple
file format" (ledger), or "files, trees, commits" (git).
Building a tool on a central idea is something I strive
to do myself. So the way ledger manages it is particularly interesting to
me.

They are not afraid to target users who have a rather special kind
of literacy (probably the literacy you need to have gotten to here
in this post). And reward them with a lot of power.
Ledger avoids a lot of the often confusing terminology around accounting,
and assumes a mind primed with the Unix tools philosophy.

If there's a GUI, it's probably web based. There's little trust in
traditional toolkits having staying power, and the web is where the
momentum is. The GUI is not the main focus, but does offer special
features of its own.
hledger's web UI completely parallels what I've doing with the git-annex
webapp, right down to being implemented using Yesod -- which really needs
to be improved to use some methods I've developed to make it easier to make
webapps that integrate with the desktop and are more secure, if there are
going to be a lot more programs like this using it.

importing data
After manually converting my GnuCash data, I imported all my PayPal history
into hledger. And happily it calculates the same balance Paypal does. It
also tells me I've paid PayPal $180 in transaction fees over the years,
which is something PayPal certianly doesn't tell you on their website.
(However, my current import from PayPal's CSV files is a hackish, and only
handles USD currency, so I miss some currency conversion fees.)
I also imported my Amazon Payments history, which includes all the
Kickstarter transactions. I almost got this to balance, but hledger and
Amazon disagree about how many hundreths of a cent remain in my account.
Still, pretty good, and I know how much I paid Amazon in fees for my
kickstarter, and how much was kicked back to Kickstarter as well.
(Look for a cost breakdown in some future blog post.)
At this point, hledger stats says I have 3700 transactions on file,
which is not bad for what was just a few hours work yesterday.
One problem is hledger's gotten a little slow with this many transactions. It
takes 5 seconds to get a balance. The ledger program, written in C, is
reportedly much faster. hledger recently had a O(n^2) slowdown fixed,
which makes me think it's probably only starting to be optimised. With
Haskell code, you can get lucky and get near C (language, not speed of
light) performace without doing much, or less lucky and get not much better
than python performance until you dive into optimising. So there's hope.
harnessing haskell
If there's one place hledger misses out on being a state of the art modern
Unix program, it's in the rules files that are used to drive CSV
imports. I found these really hard to use; the manual notes that "rules
file parse errors are not the greatest"; and it's just really inflexible.
I think the state of the art would be to use a Domain Specific Language here.
For both my Amazon and PayPal imports I had CVS data something like:

date, description, amount, fees, gross

I want to take the feeds into account, and make a split transaction, like this:

This does not seem possible with the rules file. I also wanted to combine
multiple CVS lines, to do with currency conversions, into a single
transaction, and couldn't.
The problem is that the rules file is an ad-hoc format, not a fully
programmable one. If instead, hledger's rules files were compiled into
standalone haskell programs that performed the import, arbitrarily
complicated conversions like the above could be done.
So, I'm thinking about something like this for a DSL.. I doubt I'll get
much further than this, since I have a hacked together multi-pass importer
that meets my basic needs. Still, this would be nice, and being able to
think about adding thing kind of thing to a program cleanly is one of the
reasons I reach for the Haskell version when possible these days.
First, here's part of one of my two paypal import rules files
(the other one extracts the transaction fees):

That fills out the basic fields, and makes things with "Bank Account"
in their description be categorised as bank transfers.
Here's how it'd look as Haskell, carefully written to avoid the $
operator that's more than a little confusing in this context. :)

That seems like something non-haskell people could get their heads around,
especially if they didn't need to write the boilerplate function
definitions and types at the top. But I may be biased. :)
Internally, this seems to be using a combination Reader and Writer monad
that can get at fields from a CSV line and build up a Transaction.
But I really just made up a simple DSL as I went along and thew in
enough syntax to make it seem practical to implement. :)
Of course, a Haskell programmer can skip the monads entirely, or use others
they prefer. And could do arbitrarily complicated stuff during imports,
including building split transactions, and combining together multiple
related CVS lines into a single transaction.

16 October 2012

A few days ago I wrote an article about the lawsuit the producers of ColonHelp are trying against Wordpress in the attempt to silence a blogger who wrote some unfavourable and science-based articles on his blog.

Meanwhile Petter Reinholdtsen (who seems to be a fellow skeptic, hi!) sent further this information via his blog, but on another front, I found out the German skeptics tried to contact Zenyth Phamaceuticals on Facebook and asked them why did they use lawyers for threats against critics, instead of using words and thorough scientific studies to talk to the critics.

The people at Zenyth Pharmaceuticals probably wanted to show they do not only use lawyers, but they can be very proficient at using the 'Delete' function of Facebook, so they did just that, it seems.

This really motivates me to go ahead and translate the article Zenyth's money didn't translate, the one that shows their entire case is baseless.

12 October 2012

Thanks to a blog post by
Eddy
Petri or, I became aware of yet another "alternative medicine"
company using legal intimidation tactics to scare off critics.
According to the originating blog post about the detox "cure"
ColonHelp
and its producers Zenyth Pharmaceuticals actions, the producer
sues Wordpress to get rid of the critical information. To check if
the story was for real, I contacted Automattic, the company behind
wordpress.com, and they reply was "We can confirm that Zenyth is
seeking a court order against WordPress / Automattic. However, we
don't believe the Terms of Service have been violated in this
matter".
The story seem to be simply that a blogger checked the scientific
foundation for a popular health product in Rumania, ColonHelp, and
reported that there was no reason at all to believe it improved the
health of its users. This caused the company behind the product,
Zenyth Pharmaceuticals, to use legal intimidation to try to silence
the critic, instead of presenting its views and scientific foundation
to argue its side.
This is the usual story, and the Zenyth Pharmaceuticals company
deserve everyone to know how it failed to act properly. Lets hope the
Streisand
effect can make it rethink its strategy.
What is the harm, you might think. I suggest you take a look at
a list of
victims of detoxification.

11 October 2012

It has been brought to my attention that a company selling some so-called colon cleansing product wanted to threat with a law suit a Romanian skeptical blogger because he wrote some articles showing that any such products (the one produced by the said company is the most known/popular in Romania) are pure quackery and there is no scientific basis for the claim they make in order to promote their products.

In his articles he also explained how, in fact, the mucoid plaque, the thing that supposedly proves the efficiency of the product, it is a result of taking the product due to its ingredients, and how no such mucoid plaque was ever observed in any colonoscopy, colon surgery or any other situation where you'd expect it to be seen. He also quoted specialists and lots of other scientific references, showing an honest approach to the issue.

As a response to the initial take-down message from the company doing business with people's crap, the blogger said would like to see scientific proof for the claims made for the product, and when that was to happen, he would take down the articles and publish a correction.

The company decided that the best way to continue this was to try to make a legal threat and ask 100.000 euros (one hundred thousands Euros) as damage in a country where, according to the latest data from the National Statistics Institute, the total average monthly personal income is about 180 Euros.

The blogger, as a reply, decided the threat should be made public and wrote another article which probably made the company very unhappy, because they decided to sue Wordpress so they would take down the blog.

And that's exactly what they did, they sued Wordpress, and sent some documents to Wordpress who sent them to the blogger. Among the documents there were 4 pdf files containing each an original article (in Romanian) from the blog and only 3 pdf containg English translation for only 3 of them. The one missing was the one where the blogger himself showed there wasn't any legal basis for the threats they made initially against him.

Here are the translations (ironically, made on the company's own expense):

The company is called Zenyth Pharmaceuticals and Wordpress will probably lose the lawsuit by not presenting themselves in any way in the Romanian courts, but I think some Streisand effect would really help the asses of this company to get them kicked in their rightful place, at the top of the hall of shame.

27 September 2012

So, yay! Title says it all!
On Saturday September 22, Regina and I got married in my parents' house, in Cuernavaca, Morelos.
We had a very very nice little party with our family and a small group of friends Of course, due to the nature of our life, we could not forego inviting our family and friends in Argentina, as well as those in other parts of the world, so we set up a simple video stream so that our friends could follow along And they did, with much greater success than what I expected!
So, besides those people present with us in Cuernavaca, we had people tuning in (at least to the degree I could get from the log files) from Argentina (Buenos Aires, Paran , Formosa), Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Macedonia, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United States.
This next Saturday (September 29) we will have a second party, to which our friends in Mexico are invited, at home. And for the people from far away,, the stream will be available again Expect at least one interesting surprise :)
PS- Visit also our wedding page, with some photos, video, and general information (Warning! Part of it is outdated by now)

7 July 2012

Included in Debian Edu /
Skolelinux is a large collection of end user and school specific
software. It is one of the packages not installed by default but
provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
receive. The software is
named FET, and it provide a
graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
both teachers and students. It is available both for
Linux, MacOSX and
Windows.
This is the
feature list, liftet from the project web site:

FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it

Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports

Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)

Import/export from CSV format

The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
formats

Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
(as separate sets)

Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
(but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
percentage)

Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
memory):

Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60

Maximum number of working days per week: 35

Maximum total number of teachers: 6000

Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000

Maximum total number of subjects: 6000

Virtually unlimited number of activity tags

Maximum number of activities: 30000

Maximum number of rooms: 6000

Maximum number of buildings: 6000

Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
students sets for each activity. (it is possible
also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
activity)

Virtually unlimited number of time constraints

Virtually unlimited number of space constraints

A large and flexible palette of time constraints:

Break periods

For teacher(s):

Not available periods

Max/min days per week

Max gaps per day/week

Max hours daily/continuously

Min hours daily

Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag

Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
days per week

For students (sets):

Not available periods

Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)

Max gaps per day/week

Max hours daily/continuously

Min hours daily

Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag

Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
days per week

For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:

A single preferred starting time

A set of preferred starting times

A set of preferred time slots

Min/max days between them

End(s) students day

Same starting time/day/hour

Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
flexible constraint, useful in many situations)

Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)

Not overlapping

Max simultaneous in selected time slots

Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities

A large and flexible palette of space constraints:

Room not available periods

For teacher(s):

Home room(s)

Max building changes per day/week

Min gaps between building changes

For students (sets):

Home room(s)

Max building changes per day/week

Min gaps between building changes

Preferred room(s):

For a subject

For an activity tag

For a subject and an activity tag

Individually for a (sub)activity

For a set of activities:

Occupy a maximum number of different rooms

I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it. If you
need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
manually, check it out.
A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
a
blog post from MarvelSoft. If you find FET useful, please provide
a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
Debian Edu HowTo
section.

5 May 2012

Now these are the kind of moves that needs to happen more often. Whether this will cause a negative impact on the overall market, and the further invention of drugs (including patent control), but the affordability of the medicatoin to an average citizen is a great move.The typical Chemotherapy can be on an average of 22 times. When summed up with the dosage (somewhere around 250 mg IIRC), the cost comes to approx: (22/4) * 15000 = 82k, which now, will be affordable at 27k.I guess the price slash is only for India and am not sure what the impact to the global market will look like.Quoting the article: http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/cipla-drug-price-cut-not-to-hurt-revenue-much-say-analysts_700380.html

Cipla cut price of its kidney cancer drug Sorafenib, which is sold under brand name Nexavar by multi-national Bayer to Rs 6,840 for a month's supply, from around Rs 28,000 earlier. Its lung cancer drug Gestinib, which is sold under brand name Iressa by AstraZeneca will cost Rs 4,250, versus Rs 10,200 earlier, and price of Temozolamide used to treat brain tumour, has been reduced by Rs 15,000 to Rs 5,000.

India's Patent Office recently issued a compulsory licence allowing Natco to make a generic copy of Sorafenib, on the payment of a royalty to Bayer, which sells the drug at around Rs 2 lakh.

Domestic sales account for 46-47% of Cipla's total sales and of that the cancer drugs portfolio is a very small portion, so these price cuts are unlikely to have any major impact on its revenue, Hitesh Mahida of Fortune Equity Brokers told moneycontrol.com

"Cipla's idea seems to be to create disruption in the market, increase its market share..." the analyst says.

Swiss pharma major Roche had earlier this year signed a manufacturing deal with India's Emcure Pharma so that its anti-cancer drugs Herceptin and MabThera could be made in India at affordable prices. Analysts say Cipla's move to slash prices could in future deter some MNCs from launching their drugs in India at all, but some may also look at doing deals like the one struck by Roche.

Meanwhile, shares of pharma major Cipla surged over 3% on Friday after brokerage CLSA upgraded the stock to "outperform" from "underperform," saying, Cipla would be strongest beneficiaries of a weakening rupee.

The rupee has been sliding sharply against the US dollar in recent days and hit over four month low of around Rs 53.78 earlier in trade.

"We expect improving margins over the coming quarters on back of a weak rupee and a low base. We expect strong operating profit growth over coming quarters led by margin expansion and high margin product supplies," CLSA's Hemant Bakhru said.

The US Food and Drugs Administration has approved Meda's drug Dymista for allergic rhinitis and the product is widely expected to reach USD 300-500 million in annual sales over the coming years. The analyst says Cipla being a partner, will benefit through product supplies over a longer term.

23 April 2012

The marketing industry divides itself up into a number of businesses.
Some are boutique agencies, but most are owned by one of the
world's four major holding companies. These conglomerates pursue
an aggressive M&A strategy, snapping up smaller companies all the
time.

Advertising this is the generation of ads and commercials; often
blatant and obvious, sometimes more subtle. The objective is generally
to trick people into buying something.

Media media companies handle the placement of advertising; they
are brokers for ad space and commercial slots in magazines,
newspapers, radio, TV, billboards, taxicabs and specialty vehicles,
people handing out pamphlets and samples on the street, free-standing
cardboard cutouts, website banners, and so forth. They handle product
placement everywhere (TV, movies, celebrities, video games, &c.),
ranging from the blatant in-your-face product logo to the more subtle
authorship of entire screenplays just to showcase and promote
particular products.

Research The least glamorous, but not the least lucrative, market
research is about figuring out what customers think they want. This
takes the form of polls and surveys (phone, mail, web, email), focus
groups, and a variety of surveillance and tracking methods of which
the customer may or may not be conscious (loyalty programs, social
media, special discount/rewards programs tied to your credit card,
web bugs and cookies, specialized URLs and SMS numbers, POS questions)

Public Relations When you need to manipulate public perception
in a more covert way, you might hire a PR firm. This can be something
like for when a CEO strangles his wife and suddenly there are lots of
news reports about how the company produces the cleanest-burning
fuels, and what great things it does for charity. It can be
spin on all kinds of political events, corporate performance, and
lobbying.

Medical Because of the greater amount of regulation in the
medical sector, medical marketing is handled separately. This
includes the same advertising process, but with lots of fine
print and more restrictions on the claims which can be made. It
includes research, but with different rules on the confidentiality
of data and the ways you can experiment on people. Then it
extends to services not found in other sectors, such as funneling
money from pharmaceutical companies to doctors (this is called
medical education ), and acting as middlemen between pharmaceutical
companies and the people who produce science shows for television.

Branding Depending on who you talk to, branding is not just
the process of shaping the public's perception of a particular
company or product or service, or families thereof, but also
convincing the employees of the relevant companies that the
particular message being hawked is the truth. Logos are part
of brand identity.

There are other sets of services, as well as variations on the
above, particularly in terms of targeting certain age groups or
ethnic groups, but also particular industries or sectors (movies,
politics). There is direct marketing (spamming) through all the
imaginable media. There is also paying people to blog about
certain things without disclosing their sponsorship.